Tricks For Successful Students
Homework is an important part of the learning process for students—it allows them to practice and work through problems on their own to gain a deeper understanding and mastery of the subject. But many students find themselves trying to balance assignments with sports, extracurricular activities, and family obligations. This balancing act makes it incredibly important that students learn to work effectively and efficiently through their homework load. Follow these 7 tricks to successfully deal with homework fast and well:
- Give yourself plenty of time:
- Schedule your time:
- Skip problems you don’t know:
- Work on problems in groupings:
- Work through problems before checking answers:
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help:
Most assignments should be challenging for you—they will be the most useful to you when they force you to work through a problem, and use critical thinking skills, rather than just to recite information. When assignments become easy, busywork, they aren’t very helpful in your learning process. With that in mind, it is important to give yourself plenty of time to complete assignments. For some assignments, it is important to block off a big enough chunk of time that you are able to finish it in one sitting. For other assignments it is helpful to work through the majority of it, then come back later, after a break, to check answers. Figure out which strategy works best for you, then work it into your schedule.
If you find your homework workload demanding, try scheduling your assignments ahead of time. This will help you to balance short term assignments, that are assigned one day and due the next, with longer term projects like papers and studying for tests. It will also help you to balance your homework with other obligations.
This is a helpful test taking strategy that can also help you on your assignments. Especially for math and science assignments, go through an answer the problems you know, then come back to the ones you’re struggling with. This will help establish this strategy for when you go to take a test.
It is also a good strategy to work through similar problems in groupings. If there are a number of problems on your assignment that are similar, do them together, then move onto the next grouping. Even if the problems aren’t clustered together on the page, look over the questions first, and identify patterns in them. This will help you save time.
Part of the benefit of homework is preparing your for tests. So it is good to try and use as close to a test taking simulation as possible when doing your assignments. When you come across a problem that you aren’t quite sure about, rather than looking up the answer or the equation you’d need to solve it right away, try doing it without any help first. You may still need to look up the answer in the end, but it will make your more comfortable with working on problems you’re a little out of your depth with, which can make all the difference on tests.
While it is good to try to work through problems on your own, you also shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help on your homework. There is also no shame to pay to do my homework if you are too busy to complete assignments on time. This is another reason to give yourself plenty of time, and not wait till the last minute, so you will have the opportunity to go to your teacher for help if you need to.